He stopped suddenly once more.
"We have reached the end of the block again, my boy," he said, "and I have walked long enough, and talked long enough. We must say good-night to each other."
They were standing beneath a street-lamp, and having looked up at Tredennis to say this, he drew back a pace to look again, in whimsically gentle admiration of his stalwart proportions.
"What a soldierly fellow you are!" he said; "and how you stand out among the rest of us!" And then, with an odd change of manner, he drew nearer, and laid his hand on his shoulder once more. "I'll say again," he said, "what I have said before. I wish you had been a son of mine, my boy."
And, as he said it, there fell upon the quiet of the street the sound of approaching footsteps ringing on the pavement, and, turning instinctively toward them, each saw an easily recognized masculine figure, which, reaching the house in which the Amorys lived, paused for a moment beneath the lighted window, and flung forth to the night, airily, and by no means unmusically, a few bars of one of the popular airs from a gay French opera, and then, crossing the street, applied a latch-key to the door of the opposite house, and, entering, closed it.
"The fellow has a pleasant voice," said the professor. "It is a voice you like to hear. And that is one of his whims."
"I thought I recognized the figure," said Tredennis. "It is"—
"Arbuthnot," said the professor. "Arbuthnot."
And then they parted.
To Tredennis the next three months were full of event. It was mostly quiet event, and yet, as day followed day, he was conscious that, in each twenty-four hours, he lived through some new mental experience which left its mark upon him. The first two weeks seemed to make his old regular, routine-governed life a thing of the far past, from which he was entirely separated by a gulf which it would be impossible to recross. He awakened to a recognition of this at the end of the second week, and told himself that the feeling was due to the complete novelty of his surroundings and their natural influences upon him. He found himself placed among people whose lives, ambitions, and interests were all new to him, and of a kind with which he had never before been thrown into close contact for a length of time sufficient to allow of analysis. In his first visit to Washington he had regarded its peculiarities merely as an amateur and a visitor; now he saw and studied them from a different stand-point. The public buildings were no longer mere edifices in his eyes, but developed into tremendous communities, regulated by a tremendous system for which there could be no medium or indefinite standing, but which must either be a tremendous credit or a tremendous discredit to itself and the power it represented. The human side of the place grew and impressed itself upon him. He began to feel the full significance of the stream of humanity which ebbed and flowed to and from these buildings at stated hours in the day. After a few afternoon walks on the Avenue he could recognize many a face that passed him, and comprehend something of what it typified. He could single out the young woman whosupported her family upon her salary, and the young woman who bought her ribbons with it; the widow whose pay fed half-a-dozen children, and the husband whose earnings were appropriated by a wife of fashionable aspirations; the man of broken career, whose wasted ambitions and frustrated purposes were buried in the monotonous routine of a Government clerkship, and who asked and hoped for no greater boon than to be permitted to hold his place through as much of the future as remained to him. It was an orderly and respectably dressed crowd, as a rule; but there was many a sad face to be seen in it, and many an anxious and disappointed one. It never failed to interest Tredennis, and he took his afternoon walk so often at the same hour that the passers-by began to know his tall, soldierly figure and sunbrowned face, and rather expected to encounter them; and when the newspapers had referred to him on a dozen occasions or so, there were not a few who recognized him, and pointed him out to each other as something of a celebrity and a hero, and so worth seeing.
This general knowledge which people seemed to have of one another was one thing which struck him as peculiarly local. It was the rule, and not the exception, that in walking out he met persons he knew or knew of, and he found it at no time difficult to discover the names and positions of those who attracted his attention. Almost all noticeable and numerous unnoticeable persons were to be distinguished in some way from their fellows. The dark, sinewy man he observed standing on the steps of a certain family hotel was a noted New England senator; his companion was the head of an important department; the man who stood near was the private secretary of the President, or the editor of one of the dailies, or a man with a much-discussed claim against the Government; the handsome woman whose carriage drew up before a fashionable millinery establishment was the wife of a foreign diplomat, or of a well-knownpolitician, or of a member of the Cabinet; the woman who crossed her path as she got out was a celebrated female suffragist, or female physician, or lawyer, or perhaps that much-talked-of will-o'-the-wisp, a female lobbyist; and eight persons out of every ten passing them knew their names and not a little of their private history. So much was crowded within a comparatively limited radius that it was not easy for any person or thing worthy of note to be lost or hidden from the public eye.
By the most natural gradations Tredennis found the whole tenor of his existence changed in this atmosphere. His fixed habits of life gave way before the influences surrounding him.
One of the most subtle of these influences was that of his intimacy with the members of the Amory household, which grew as he had not at all anticipated that it would. He had thought of the acquaintance in the first place as one not likely to ripen into anything beyond its rather conventional significance. Perhaps, on the whole, he had been content to let it rest as it was, feeling only half-consciously that he should be in a quieter frame of mind and less liable to vague pangs and disappointments.
"It is all different," he had said to himself. "And it is all over. It is better that it should remain as it is."
But after his first visit Richard did not choose to lose sight of him. It was his fancy to seek him out and make much of and take possession of him, with an amiability and frank persistence in the chase which were at once complimentary and engaging.
"Look here!" he would say, having followed him up to reproach him. "You don't suppose we intend to be treated in this manner? We won't hear of it. We want you. Your stalwart solidity is what we have been needing to give us weight and balance. Only yesterday Bertha was holding you up to Arbuthnot as a modelof steadfastness of purpose. We thought we were going to see you every other day, at least, and you have not been near us for a week. Bertha wonders what we have been guilty of."
And then he would be carried up to luncheon or dinner, or to spend the evening; and each visit resulted in another and another, until it gradually became the most natural thing in the world that he should drop in at odd hours, because it seemed that he was always expected, and he appeared to have a place among them.
"Do you know what we shall do with you if you remain here a year?" Bertha had said to him at the outset. "We shall domesticate you. We not only domesticated Mr. Arbuthnot, but we appropriated him. We feel that we have invested largely in him, and that he ought to respect our rights and pay interest. Sometimes I wonder how he likes it, and just now it occurs to me to wonder how you would like it."
"The question is," Tredennis answered, "howyouwould like it."
He was always conscious of a silent distaste for being compared to Mr. Arbuthnot, and he was also always conscious of the youthful weakness of the feeling.
"It is the kind of thing which belongs to a younger man," he used to say to himself. "It is arrant folly; and yet I am not fond of the fellow."
But, as Bertha had predicted, he became in a manner domesticated in the household. Perhaps the truth was that his natural tendency was toward the comfort and easy communion of home-life. He was a little surprised to find himself develop a strong fancy for children. He had never been averse to them, but he had known nothing of them, and had never suspected himself of any definite disposition to fondness for them. After he had watched Bertha's during a few visits he began to like them, and to be oddly interested in their sayings and doings. He discovered Jack to be a decidedly sturdyand masculine little fellow, with rather more than his share of physical strength and beauty; and, making amicable advances toward him, was met half-way with a fearless readiness which was very attractive. Then he made friends with Janey, and found himself still more interested. Her childish femininity was even better worth studying than Jack's miniature manhood. She was a small, gentle creature, with clinging hands and much faith, but also with a delightful sense of infantile dignity, and the friendship which established itself between them was a very absorbing sentiment. It was not long before it became an understood thing among the juvenile portion of the establishment that Tredennis was to be counted among the spoils. His incoming was greeted with rapture, his outgoing was regarded as a species of calamity only to be borne because it was unavoidable. He could tell stories of Indians and bears, and on more than one occasion was decoyed into the nursery, and found to be not entirely without resources in the matter of building forts with blocks, and defending them against aboriginal warriors with tin soldiers. His own sense of enjoyment of the discovery of these accomplishments in himself filled him with a whimsical pleasure. He began to carry toys in his pockets, and became a connoisseur of such dainties as were considered harmless to the juvenile constitution; and after having been reproved by Janey, on two or three occasions, for the severity of his air, he began also to have a care that the expression of his countenance should be less serious and more likely to win the approval of innocent small creatures, who considered gravity uncalled for and mysterious. At first he had seemed to learn but little of Bertha herself, notwithstanding that a day seldom passed without their meeting, and there were times when he fancied he had determined that there was but little to learn. The gayeties of the season over, she announced her intention of resting; and her manner of accomplishing this end was to inaugurate a series of smallfestivities, with a result of occupying each day until midnight. She gave small, informal dinners, suppers, and teas to the favored few who would be most likely to enjoy and find them exhilarating, and, when she did not give a dinner or tea, her evenings were bestowed upon Arbuthnot and half a dozen of the inner circle, whose habit it was to drop in and talk politics, literature, or entertaining nonsense.
At such times it was not at all unusual for the professor to ramble in at about nine o'clock, and profess to partake of the cup of tea Bertha offered him, and which he invariably left more than half full upon the small table by his chair. His old tender interest in her had not lessened in degree, Tredennis noticed, after seeing them together on two or three occasions, but it had altered in kind. Sometimes the look of curious speculation returned to his eyes, but oftener they expressed a patient, kindly watchfulness. It was not long before Tredennis began to observe that this quietly watchful look generally showed itself when Arbuthnot was present. The first time that he felt the full force of the truth of this was one evening when there had been only two or three callers, who had remained but a short time, going away early, and leaving no one in the parlors but himself, the professor, and Arbuthnot.
Arbuthnot had come in later than usual, and had appeared to be in an unusual mood. He was pale when he entered, and had no jesting speech to make. He took his seat by Bertha, and replied to her remarks with but little of his customary animation, now and then lapsing into silence as if he had forgotten his surroundings. Bertha seemed inclined to let his humor pass without notice, as if it was not exactly a new experience; but Richard commented upon it.
"Something has gone wrong," he said. "What is it, Larry?"
"Nothing has gone wrong," Arbuthnot answered, with a short, cheerless laugh. "I have seen a ghost, that is all."
"A ghost!" said Bertha, in a low voice, and then sat silent, guarding her face from the fire with her favorite peacock-feather screen.
The professor began to stir his tea round and round, which exercise was his customary assistance to reflection or debate. He glanced at the peacock-feather screen, and then at Arbuthnot.
"A ghost is always an interesting scientific conundrum," he observed. "What form did it take?"
Arbuthnot laughed his short, cheerless laugh again.
"It took the form of a sanguine young man from the West," he said, "who has just come into a twelve-hundred-dollar clerkship, and feels that unending vistas of fortune lie before him. He was in such good spirits about it that I rather lost my hold on myself, and said things I might as well have left unsaid."
"What did you say?" Richard asked.
"I told him that if he had money enough left to buy a return ticket home he had better buy one; and that, if he had not, I would lend it to him. I told him that at his age it wasn't a bad idea for a man to devote his time to establishing himself in some career he could depend on; and that, in default of having the energy to do that, he might reflect on the alternative of blowing his brains out as a preparation for a peaceful old age. And I told him that I had seen young fellows like himself before, and that the end had been for them what it would be for him."
"Well?" said Richard, as he had stopped.
"It wasn't any use," he answered. "I knew it would not be when I began. I simply made a spectacle of myself in a quiet way to no purpose, and as a result I am uncomfortable. It was all nonsense, but he reminded me"—
"Of what?" said Richard, since he had paused again.
A peculiar expression crossed his face. Tredennis saw him glance at the peacock-feather screen, and as quickly glance away.
"Of—a young fellow of his age I—used to know," he answered.
"What washisstory?" inquired Richard, with his usual desire for information. "Where is he now?"
"Dead," said Arbuthnot; and, singularly enough, he half laughed again as he tossed his cigar into the grate and went to the piano.
He began to sing in a rather low voice, and while he sang the rest listened. When he referred to his musical efforts it was his habit to treat them as but trivial performances; but he allowed them to lose none of their effectiveness through lack of care and culture. He knew wherein his power lay, and used it well. To-night, for some reason, this power was at its strongest, and, as he sang song after song, even Tredennis was compelled to acknowledge that, if it was his object to produce an emotional effect, he was in a fair way to succeed.
Richard threw himself upon a sofa and gave himself up to him with characteristic readiness to be moved, the professor stirred his tea slowly and mechanically, and Bertha sat still in the shadow of her screen. But it was she who moved first. In the midst of one of the songs she left her seat, slowly crossed the room to the piano, and stood near it, leaning against the dark wall, her slight white figure thrown into strong relief, her hands—one of them still holding the peacock-feather screen—fallen at her sides, her eyes resting on Arbuthnot's averted face. It seemed to Tredennis that she had moved in obedience to some impulse of whose power she was scarcely conscious. He saw that she also was pale, and looked worn with fatigue, and he was filled, as he had been more than once before, with secret resentment of the fact that no one but himself appeared to notice that she had changed even within the last month.
Arbuthnot continued playing. It was evident that she had not intended to distract his attention when sheapproached him, and he did not look at or speak to her. As she stood listening, it seemed as if she had forgotten everything but the influence his voice exerted over her for the time being, and that she allowed it to carry her whither it would. Something in the soft, absorbed expression of her face reminded Tredennis vaguely of the look she had worn when she turned to brood over his words on the night when he had felt nearest to her. He was thinking this when a movement from the professor attracted his attention,—a jingling of the teaspoon, a little crash, an exclamation of dismay and confusion, and the little stand had mysteriously been overturned, and the professor was ruefully bending down to pick up the fragments of his small cup and saucer.
"My dear child!" he said to Bertha, who had started forward to his rescue, "what a stupid old Vandal I am, and what an insecure little table to betray me with—and in the midst of Schubert's 'Serenade,' too, which Mr. Arbuthnot was giving us in his most effective manner! Suppose you take me up into the nursery, as an example to the children, while you dry my coat."
He went out of the room with her, his hand upon her shoulder, and Arbuthnot left the piano, and returned to the fire. The spell had been broken with the cup and saucer, and the "Serenade" remained unfinished. He produced a fresh cigar,—which luxury was one of many accorded him in the household,—lighted it, and, rather to Tredennis' surprise, resumed his conversation as if there had been no pause in it.
"The fellow will be an annoyance to me every day of his life," he said, faint lines showing themselves upon his forehead in spite of the half-smile which was meant to deprive them of their significance. "I know that, confound him! He is in my room, and I shall have the benefit of every change in him, and it will be a grind—there's no denying that it will be a grind."
"I should like to know," said Tredennis, "what the changes will be."
"The changes will depend upon the kind of fellow he chances to be," said Arbuthnot. "There are two varieties. If there is a good deal in him he will begin by being hopeful and working hard. He will think that he may make himself of value in his position and create a sort of career for himself. He will do more than is required of him, and neglect nothing. He will keep his eyes open and make friends of the men about him. He will do that for a few months, and then, suddenly, and for no fault whatever, one of these friends will be dropped out. Knowing the man to be as faithful as himself, it will be a shock to him, and he will get anxious, and worry over it. He will see him stranded without resources, struggling to regain his place or get another, treated with amiable tolerance when he is not buffeted, snubbed, and put off. He will see him hanging about day after day, growing shabbier, more careworn, more desperate, until he disappears and is heard of no more, and everybody is rather relieved than not. He may have been a family man, with a wife and half-a-dozen children all living decently on his salary. Somebody else wanted his place and got it, not because of superior fitness for it, but because the opposing influence was stronger than his. The new man will go through the same experience when his turn comes—that is all. Well, my friend will see this and be anxious, and ask questions and find out that his chances are just the same—no more and no less. He will try not to believe it, being young enough to be betrayed into the folly, and he will work harder than ever, and get over his blow a little until he sees the same thing happen again and again. Then he will begin to lose some of his good spirits; he will be a trifle irritable at times, and lines will show themselves on his face, and he won't be so young. When he writes to the girl he is in love with,—I saw a letter addressed to some young womanout West, lying on his desk to-day,—she will notice a change in him, and the change will reveal itself more in each letter; but he will hang on and grind away, and each election will be a nightmare to him. But he will grind away. And, then, at last"—
He stopped and made a light, rather graceful gesture with his fingers.
"What then?" demanded Tredennis, with manifest impatience.
"There will be a new administration, and, if he struggles through, it will be worse for him than if he were dropped, as in that case he throws away another four years of his life and all the chances for a future they might hold if he were free to avail himself of them."
Tredennis stood up, looking very large under the influence of the feeling which disturbed him. Arbuthnot himself was not entirely unimpressed by his quick movement and the energy it expressed.
"You treat the matter coolly," he exclaimed, as he rose.
Arbuthnot turned his attention to his cigar.
"Yes," he replied. "I treat it coolly. If I treated it warmly or hotly the effect produced would be about the same. My influence upon civil service is just what it might be expected to be, and no more. Its weight is easily carried."
"I beg your pardon," said Tredennis, feeling the justice and adroitness of the speech.
"Not at all," Arbuthnot answered. "It is not necessary. It makes you lose your hold on yourself to be brought face to face with the thing. It is quite natural. It has had the same effect on me, and I am a cold-blooded fellow, and a frivolous fellow into the bargain."
"I have never thought of the matter before," said Tredennis, disturbedly. "I feel as if my indifference is something to be ashamed of."
"If you give your attention as a duty to such subjects,"was Arbuthnot's response, "you will be kept actively employed. If you take my advice, you will let them alone."
"The trouble is," said Tredennis, "that every one seems to let them alone."
Richard regarded him, from his place on the sofa-cushions, delightedly.
"Here's an example for you, Larry," he said. "Profit by him. Everything is an object to him,—everything is worth while. He is an example to us all. Let us all profit by him."
"Oh, he began right," laughed Arbuthnot.
"He began where you began," returned Richard.
"I?" was the airy answer; "I never began at all. That is my little difficulty. I am the other one. I told you there was another one. I represent him."
Tredennis regarded him steadily. For the first time in the course of their acquaintance he began to suspect him. His manner was too light altogether, and the odd shade which had fallen upon his eyes before during the evening showed itself again.
"Let us hear about the other one," he said.
"He is easily disposed of," was the answer. "There was nothing of him at the outset. He came to his place without an object. He liked the idea of living in Washington, and of spending his salary. We will say he was a rather well-looking young fellow, and could dance and sing a little, and talk decently well. He had no responsibilities, and never thought of the future. His salary clothed him, and allowed him little luxuries and ordinary pleasures. He spent it when he had it, and made debt when it was gone. Being presentable, he was invited out, and made himself useful and entertaining in a small way. When he thought of the possibilities of his career being brought suddenly to a close, he was uncomfortable, so he preferred not to think of it. It is not a pleasant thing to reflect that a man has about ten years in which to begin life, and thatafter that he is ending it; but it is true. What he does from twenty to thirty he will be likely to find he must abide by from thirty to seventy, if he lives that long. This man, like the better one, has thrown away the years in which he might have been preparing himself to end decently. When they are gone he has nothing to show for them, and less than nothing. He is the feather upon the current, and when all is over for him he is whirled out of sight and forgotten with the rest. And, perhaps, if he had felt there was anything to be gained by his being a steady, respectable fellow, he might have settled down into one."
He got up suddenly, with a gesture as if he would shake himself free of his mood.
"Here," he said, "I'm going! It is quite time. It's all nonsense talking it over. It is the old story. I have made myself uncomfortable for nothing. Confound you, Dick, why did you let me begin? Say good-night to the professor and Mrs. Amory for me."
"Come back!" called Richard. "Bertha will want to hear the rest of the 'Serenade' when she comes down."
"The 'Serenade'!" he said, derisively. "No, thank you. You have had enough of me, and I have had too much of myself."
He passed into the hall just as the professor descended from the nursery and through the open door. Tredennis heard what they said to each other.
"You did not finish the 'Serenade,'" said the professor.
"No," was the reply; "and I am afraid you were resigned to it, Professor."
"You were singing it very well, and with great effect," the professor responded, amicably.
"You are very kind to say so," Arbuthnot answered. "Good-night, sir."
"Good-night," replied the professor, as he entered the parlor.
As he did so Tredennis heard the sound of feet upon the stairs, and caught a glimpse of Bertha's white figure as she came down.
"You are not going?" he heard her say.
"Yes."
She had reached the last step by this time, and stood with her hand resting upon the balustrade, and she was paler than she had been before.
"I—" she began—"I wanted to talk to you. What is it, Larry?"
Tredennis had never heard her call him by his first name before; and he felt, with a keenness which startled him, the soft naturalness with which it fell from her lips.
Arbuthnot's voice itself had altered when he answered her.
"It is nothing," he said, "but that I am not exactly in a presentable humor, and I want to go and conceal myself. It is the best thing I can do. Good-night."
He held out his hand, touched hers lightly, and then turned away, and the door opened and closed after him, and Bertha came into the parlor, moving slowly, as if she felt tired.
When Tredennis rose to take his leave, the professor rose also.
"I will go with you," he said. "And if you will, you shall give me a few minutes of your time before going home. I have some new books to show you."
They went out together; but, until they reached the other house and entered the library, very little was said. The catastrophe of the broken teacup, or something of greater moment, seemed to occupy the professor's thoughts. By the time they took their accustomed chairs he appeared to have forgotten the new books. His thoughtful face wore so sadly perplexed a look that he even seemed older than usual.
Tredennis awaited his first words in silence. His quiet fondness for him had become a very warm and tender feeling during the past months. It had been his pleasure to try to be of use to him. He had studied his needs, and endeavored to supply them; he had managed to share hours with him which might otherwise have been lonely; he had brought to him the stir of the outside working world when he seemed to require its stimulant; he had placed his own vigor and endurance at his disposal without seeming to do so, and his efforts at making his rather lonely life a brighter and more attractive thing had not been in vain. It was to him the professor turned in his moments of fatigue and necessity, and it was to him he turned now.
"I am going to do a curious thing," he said.—"I am going to do a curious thing; but I think it is the best thing and the simplest."
"The simplest thing is always the best," saidTredennis, more because there was a pause than because he felt an answer was needed.
"Yes, yes," said the professor, seriously. "I think so. And it is easier to be simple with you, my boy, than with another man. It is your way to be direct and serious. You always had the habit. It never was your way to trifle. It is rather the fashion to trifle nowadays, you know, but you,—I have always liked it in you that you were not a trifler."
"No," answered Tredennis; "I have not trifled much. It may have been against me. Sometimes I have thought it was. I cannot count it among my merits, at any rate. I am a grim fellow by nature."
"No," said the professor. "Not a grim fellow. A silent fellow, and rather unyielding with yourself, but"—
He stopped, and looked up at him with a simple affection which made the young man's heart beat as a woman's glance might have done.
"I think you know I love you," he said. "I have begun to depend on you and count you among my luxuries. I am an old man, and my luxuries are worth a great deal to me. No kindly, thoughtful act of yours has been unregarded, and I have liked your fancy for me almost as a girl likes the attentions of her first lover. Sometimes it has pleased me to be half sentimental over them, and half sentimental over you."
Tredennis flushed with pleasure and warm feeling. He rose impulsively and crossed the hearth.
"I never say things well," he said, "but I should like to try to put into words something of what I feel. You once said you wished I was your son, and I have been glad to remember it. I have no ties. Let your wish be a sort of tie between us. It is a tie I should be proud of, and glad to honor and make an object in my life. Give me what affection you can. I wish for it and need it. If I had been your son you would have counted on me; give me the pleasure and comfort of knowing youcount on me now. It has somehow seemed my lot to have no place in the lives of others. Give me this, if I am worth it. I shall be better for it, and happier."
The professor gave him a quiet, half-wistful glance.
"I gave it to you long ago," he said, at length. "The wish has been a tie between us from the first."
And he said it even with a touch of solemnity.
"If it had not been," he added, afterward, "I should not have come to you with my trouble to-night,—feeling so sure that you would understand it."
He made a gesture with his hand.
"Go and walk up and down the room there, as I am used to seeing you," he said. "And I will tell you about it."
Tredennis did as he bade him,—went to the other side of the room and began his measured march.
"We talked of Bertha in this very room years ago," he began. "It seems to be our lot to talk of Bertha. I am going to speak of her again."
Tredennis continued his measured tramp without speaking.
The professor rested his forehead upon his hand and sat so, looking downward. He went on in a quiet voice, and with a quiet, absorbed manner,—the manner of a man who, having the habit of close and careful study, was giving his whole attention simply and carefully to his subject.
"I shall have to go back to that night and repeat something I said then," he went on. "It was that her only hope for happiness would lie in her marriage with a man she loved deeply."
"I remember it," Tredennis answered.
"And I added that the chances were that, instead, she would marry the man who loved her."
"I remember that too."
The professor sighed heavily and wearily.
"The chances were too many," he said. "She married the man who loved her."
Tredennis had marched one length of the room before he continued:—
"He did love her," the professor said, after his pause, "tempestuously—overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly is a good word to use. He overwhelmed her in the end. At first she liked him; but when the nature of his feeling for her began to express itself, it is my impression that she felt a secret fear of and dislike to it. She tried to avoid him, but he absolutely refused to allow it. He followed her, and was picturesquely wretched before her eyes. There is no denying he was picturesque. That was his strong point. He was picturesque and pathetic—and poetic. She was only a girl, and she was tremendously at a disadvantage before him. When she treated him badly he bore it with tender patience, and he devoted himself to her with a faithfulness which might have touched a heart harder and more experienced than hers was, poor child! Of course his picturesque unhappiness and his poetic magnanimity told; I knew they would, and they did. Reaction set in, and she began to feel the fascination of making him happy."
He stopped, and suddenly lifted his head.
"My boy," he said, "one of the most damnable things in life is a fascination like that in the mind of a generous, ignorant creature!"
He dropped his head again.
"That is strong language," he said, "and I don't often use strong language. I—don't consider it gentlemanly, but I felt strongly at the moment, and the word is expressive. Well, the time came when, in a moment when her mood being softer and more sympathetic than usual, and she herself, as a consequence, at a greater disadvantage than ever,—she committed herself; and then it was all over. The trouble is, that the experience of a woman of forty is what a girl needs when she chooses her husband at twenty, and, as the two things are incompatible, the chances are always against her. Bertha had the faults and follies that I told you go to make amartyr. When she had made her mistake, she was strong and weak enough to abide by it. It is mostly imagination in matters of this kind; it was imagination in hers. She was young enough to believe in everything. She believed that if she broke her engagement she would break Amory's heart and ruin his life for him. There was no danger of either catastrophe, but they were realities to her, and they terrified her. Then she had never been touched by any deeper feeling than the anxious tenderness he awakened in her. She had not been given to sentiments, and, I am afraid, had regarded them rather contemptuously in others. She had no conception of a feeling stronger than herself, and held curiously obstinate and lofty views of the conduct of women who did not hold their emotions neatly in check. Her girlish bigotry was touching to me sometimes, because it was so thorough, and revealed such ignorance. I wish—I wish I could hear something of it now!"
Tredennis had reached the end of the room. He turned sharply, but recovered himself and said nothing.
"Lately," the professor added slowly, "she has been more silent on such subjects than she used to be."
He lifted his head from his hand and looked at Tredennis again.
"Philip," he said, "I—I wish to heaven chance had sent you to us that year."
Tredennis stopped in his walk, a dark and rigid figure in the shadow.
"Had sent me?" he said, in a strained voice. "Me! What—couldIhave done?"
"I—I don't know," answered the professor; "but I solemnly believe, my boy, thatifyou had come, you would have averted an evil."
"Then," said Tredennis, "I wish to God I had!"
"I say it," said the professor, "with all the more certainty, remembering, as I do, one day when she wished for you herself."
"She!" said Tredennis. "Bertha? Bertha?"
"Yes, Bertha herself. It was a few weeks before her marriage, and she had not been exactly herself for a week or more. One evening I came into the parlor and found the room full of the odor of flowers. Amory had been with her and had left her a bouquet of heliotrope. She had some on her knee as she sat on a low seat before the fire. When I seated myself near her, she looked up at me suddenly and said, in a rather unsteady voice, 'Papa, I have been thinking about Philip Tredennis. I have not thought of him for a long time. I should like to see him. I—wish he could come back.' She half laughed at herself as she said it, but her laugh was nervous, and when I said to her, 'Why? Wereyougreat friends? I did not know that,' she tried to laugh again, and answered, 'Yes—no—not exactly. But it seems to me that he was a strong sort of person, and sensible, and—and you might rely on his decisions. It is only a fancy, I suppose—but it just came into my mind that I should like to see him again.' There is no doubt, in my mind, that she felt a need of your obstinate strength, which she did not comprehend wholly herself. I wish you had come—I wish from my soul you had!"
"I might have come if I had known," said Tredennis, in a low tone. "There was nothing—nothingto have stood in my way." And he turned and began his walk again.
The professor sighed, as he had sighed before—heavily and drearily.
"But you did not," he said. "And she married Amory."
"I should like to know," asked Tredennis, "if you think she is unhappy now. Do not tell me if you do not wish."
The professor's reply was very simple and direct.
"She has never been given to taking sentimental views of herself," he said, "and she is self-controlled and fond of her children, but she has never been happy foran hour since her marriage. I think the first year was very bitter to her. Amory has always been very fond of her; he is fond of her now, but her illusions concerning his passion for her soon died. She found out in two months that he would not have perished if she had discarded him. She had been his one object at first, but she was only one of a dozen others after they were married. He was amiable and delightful, but he was not always considerate. The picturesqueness of his attitude toward her was lost. He did not require her care and sympathy, and the sacrifices she made for him were very simple and natural matters in his eyes.
"In the beginning she was, perhaps, bewildered and desperate; but, girl as she was, she was too proud and just not to see that her youth and ignorance had led her into a folly, and that the result was its natural punishment. Once she said to me, 'The worse punishments in life are the punishments for ignorance—the worst, the worst!' And I knew what she meant, though she said no more. When her first child was born, she went down to the door of death, and her physicians said there seemed to be a lack of effort. And yet, I tell you she might have been the happiest young mother in the world. When she has been near happiness at all it has been in her quiet moments with her children. If it had not been for her children she might have been a harder and more heartless creature than she can ever be now. If she had been something less and slighter than fate made her she might have been either a dull nurse and housekeeper or a vapid woman of society; in either case she would have been happier than she is to-day. What a long story it is, and I did not think it would be so long when I began."
"I want to hear it all," broke in Tredennis,—"every word. I have not understood the changes I saw in her I want to understand."
"That brings me to the point of it all," was the reply. "If she had been a laborer's wife she mighthave been too hard-worked to be restless; but she has had leisure, and social duties, and she has set herself deliberately the desperate task of making them her pleasures. She has found an exhilaration in them which has given her no time for regrets. She is a woman, young, attractive, and spirited. She was too full of spirit to permit herself to be subdued by her disappointment. As she cannot retrieve her mistake, she will make the best of it. She has reasoned herself into a belief that she is satisfied with what fortune has given her, and so long as that belief remains unshaken, she will be as happy as nine women out of ten are. Women are not happy, as a rule, Philip; they are not happy. I have learned that."
"But so long as her belief remains unshaken"—said Tredennis.
The professor interrupted him, gravely, sadly.
"That is the point," he said. "My fear is that it is shaken now."
Tredennis stopped in the middle of the room—stood quite still.
"She has had friends and admirers," said the professor, "scores of them. Perhaps all the more because she has cared less for them than they for her. She has a pretty trick of making the best of people, and it wins the public heart. She has friends, acquaintances, and even harmless devotees; but among them all there is only one man who gauges her, and that man is the one who very naturally presents himself to your mind as a fair dandy, with a ready tongue and good manners."
"Arbuthnot!" exclaimed Tredennis. "Arbuthnot!"
The professor smiled faintly.
"What," he said, "you recognize him at once! Well, my one vanity is my pride in my private knowledge of the thought of others. I am very proud of it, in a senile way. I have been studying and classifying all my life, and now I sit and look on, and treat human beings as I have treated insects. If it had not been so,I should not have known so much of Bertha. Yes, Arbuthnot. Among all the men she knows and has known—diplomates, literati, politicians, honest men—I have found only one to disturb me, and that one Laurence Arbuthnot."
Tredennis stood still, looking down at the floor, with folded arms.
"I"—he began, "I have thought"—
The professor started.
"What!" he exclaimed. "Youhave thought? If you have thought—it must be plainer than I feared."
"No," said Tredennis, hurriedly. "Do not let that trouble you. What I have thought is so trivial and vague that it should not weigh at all. It has only been because I remembered her girlhood, and—and I thought her changed—and did not understand."
"Ah!" said the professor, letting his face fall upon both his hands. "That is nothistrouble;heunderstands, and that is his strength. He has had his evil hour, that composed, well-dressed fellow, and he did not come out of it without scars. He covers them well, with his light overcoat and the rose in his buttonhole, but they are there, and they have made him wise. He has been silent, but he has looked on too,—as I have,—and he has seen what others were blind to. She has never suspected him, but his knowledge has given him power. When hermauvais quart d'heurehas come upon her he has known what to say and what to avoid saying, and while she has not comprehended his motives she has been grateful to him. She has liked his songs and his readiness, and his unsentimental air, and she has unconsciously learned to rely on him. Her first sincere liking for him arose from her discovery of his inconsistent and incongruous knack with the children. She had thought of him as a rather clever, selfish, well-mannered creature, and once in a juvenile crisis he surprised her by developing natural gifts—somewhat cold-blooded, but still amazingly effective.The children began to be fond of him, and his path was smoothed. She began to be fond of him herself, genuinely and simply, and if it had ended there she would have been safer than before. But it did not end there, I suppose. The cup and saucer were not broken too soon this evening,—they were not broken soon enough."
"It was not an accident?" exclaimed Tredennis.
"No, it was not an accident. I have heard his 'Serenade' before. There is the danger. He means no harm; but his 'Serenade' and the moments when what is past gets the better of him, and the little touches of passion his overcoat won't always cover, and the bits of sincerity he struggles against and she ponders over, are good for neither him nor her. I have heard his 'Serenade' before; but to-night, when she got up and followed him as if he had called her, and—and she had only half heard his voice and yet must obey it; and when she stood there against the wall, with her pale face, and her soft eyes fixed on him, it was time for some common thing to happen to bring her back to life,—and the cup and saucer were offered as the sacrifice."
He said it whimsically, and yet sadly.
"Poor child!" he added. "Poor child! I dare say it was hard enough."
He paused a moment, and then rose, went to Tredennis's side, and laid his hand on his shoulder.
"There," he said,—"there is the confession, and I can make my appeal to you with fewer words."
"Your appeal?" Tredennis repeated.
"I can ask you for your help."
"If there is any help I can give which is worth the asking and giving," said Tredennis, slowly, "you know it will be yours."
"Yes, I know it will be mine, and so I ask it easily. And what I ask is this. Let us walk slowly while we talk, and I will keep my hand on your shoulder,—I like to feel your support. What I would say is this:if you had been my son, you would have watched over her and stood between her and any pain which could threaten her. You know that what I fear for her now is only the desperate, hopeless misery such an experience as this would be sure to bring her if it were allowed to ripen; for her there is nothing else to fear. No, I know I need not have said that to you."
"No," answered Tredennis, "there was no need to say it."
"She does not know herself. I know her, and know what such an experience holds for her. Better that her life should be barren to the end than that she should bear what she must bear if her heart is once awakened."
"Better!" said Tredennis.
He felt the tremulous hand weigh heavily upon him.
"I am an old man," he was answered. "I have lived my life nearly to its close, and I say athousandtimes better! I married a woman I did not love, and I loved a woman I could not marry."
"And you wished to ask me," said Tredennis, breaking the short silence which followed.
"I ask you to defend her against this pain. If I were a younger and stronger man, I might do for her what I ask of you; but I cannot often be with her. You are with her day after day. She likes you."
"I have fancied," Tredennis said, "that she didnotlike me."
"It is only fancy. She sees in you the strength she vaguely longed for when she was at the turning-point of her life. Let her feel that it is always near her, and that she may rely upon it now. You are fond of her children,—talk to her of them. When you see her inclined to be silent and unlike herself, bring them to her mind; when that fellow is there, manage that she shall think of them. Her tenderness for them is your stronghold and mine. To-night, why did I take her to the nursery? Because they lay asleep there, and whenshe saw them she stopped to cover them more warmly, and touch them with her hand, and bend to kiss them, and forgot her 'Serenade.' She loves them better than she loves anything else on earth,—better than she could love anything else, perhaps. That's her woman's way. God made it so. That is the one help and safeguard He gave to women out of the whole bitter universe. Bring her back to her children at her saddest and weariest, and when the fight is hardest, and they will beat the rest back. It is Nature. You will do what I ask, I know.
"I shall be more at ease," he said next, "that I have asked this of you. When you are with her I shall feel that she is safe. I trust her in your hands."
"I will try to be worthy of the trust."
"It is rather a strange one to repose in a man of your age, but I give it to you with the rest,—it goes with the tie you wished for. It is a relief to me to share it with a strong fellow who can bear it well."
They talked a little longer, walking across the floor two or three times together, and then Tredennis went away. He was in a strange frame of mind. It was almost as if he had received a blow which had partially stunned him. When he reached the street he stood for a moment looking up at the starlit sky.
"A strong fellow," he said. "AmI such a strong fellow? AndIam to stand between you and your lover,—I? That is a strange thing, Bertha—a strange thing."
And, rousing himself suddenly, he strode down the street, and the professor, who had gone to his room, heard his military tread ringing steady and measured upon the pavement and felt a vague comfort in the sound.
During the next few weeks Bertha did not appear as well as usual. The changes Tredennis had seen in her became more marked. She lost color and roundness, and now and then was forced to show signs of fatigue which were not habitual with her. She made no alteration in her mode of life, however. When Tredennis called in the evening the parlor was always full, and she was always vivaciously occupied with her guests. Chief among her attractions was counted her pet pretence of being interested in politics. It was not a very serious pretence, but, being managed deftly and with a sense of its dramatic value, animated many an hour which might otherwise have been dull, in view of the social material which occasionally fell into her hands.
"What should I do," Tredennis heard her say once, "if I knew nothing of politics? There are times when they are my only salvation. What should I have done last night with the new member from Arkansas if I had not remembered that he was interested in the passage of the Currency Bill? He is an excellent, solid, sensible creature; we are frivolous, aimless beings compared with him. It is such men as he who do everything worth doing and being done, but he is purely a politician, and he has spent his life in a small provincial town, where he has been a most important person, and he cares as much for the doings of society and discussions of new novels and pictures as I do for the linseed-oil market—if there is a linseed-oil market. When I began to ask him modest questions about his bill, his face brightened at once, and he became a self-respecting and well-informed person,—at ease with himself and with me, and quite forgot his coat and hislarge boots, which had been slowly and painfully dawning upon him a few moments before when he contrasted them with Mr. Arbuthnot's silk attire. My very mistakes were a pleasure to him, as they gave him an opportunity to say several things very well worth remembering. He could not have told whether I was well or ill dressed, but he detected my flimsiness in argument in a moment, and gave me more information in half an hour than you scoffers could have given me in a week, and"—with much modesty of demeanor—"he mentioned to Senator Vaughan, in the course of the evening, that I was a most intelligent woman."
Arbuthnot and Richard burst into the laughter which was always her applause upon such occasions.
"You!" commented Arbuthnot. "You are Herodias' daughter, dancing for the head of John the Baptist. You are always dancing in a quiet and effective way for somebody's head. Whose would you like next? How does mine strike you?"
"Thank you," said Bertha. "Would you really give it to me if I danced for you in my ablest manner; and how do you think it would look on a charger?"
There was more than one hard-worked politician who, after a day of exciting debate or wearisome battling with windmills, found relief and entertainment in the pretty parlors. Some of those who came had known Bertha in her girlhood and were friends of her father, and with these it was the fashion to encourage her to political argument, and affect the deepest confidence in her statements, with a view to drawing forth all her resources. These resources were varied and numerous, and marked by a charming feminine daring and superiority to ordinary logic which were the delights of the senatorial mind.
"Why should I endeavor to convince you by being logical?" she said. "You have logic—at least we hope so—all day, and sometimes all night, in the Senate and the House, and even then you are notconvinced of things. It is not logic which governs you, but a majority. And that is what one should aspire to, after all,—not to be in the right, but to be in the majority. And I am sure one's arguments are much more untrammelled and brilliant for being illogical. And if I convince you without logic, I win a victory worth having. It is like the triumph of an ugly woman who is called a beauty. If I am pretty and you say so, it is simply as if you said, 'white is white, blackness is dark'; but if I am not pretty, and am ingenious enough to persuade you that I am—there is a triumph to be proud of!"
It was nonsense, but it was often sparkling nonsense, whose very lightness was its charm, and the rooms were rarely ever so gay and full of laughter as when there was among the guests a sprinkling of men no longer young, who had come there to forget that they were jaded, or secretly anxious, or bitterly disappointed.
"It pleases me to dance before some of them," Bertha said to Arbuthnot. "I like to think I make them forget things for a little while. If I can do nothing greater and wiser, let me employ my one small accomplishment to the best advantage, and do my harmless best to be both graceful and agile. No one can persuade me that it can be a pleasant thing to engage in a hand-to-hand conflict from three to eight months in the year, and to sit day after day placidly endeavoring to confront men who differ with you on every point, and who count the fact among their virtues, and glory in it, and watch you and listen to you, with the single object of seizing an opportunity to prove in public that you are an imbecile or a falsifier, or a happy combination of both. When I reflect upon my own feelings," she added, with delightfulnaïveté, "when people are stupid and ill-mannered enough to differ with me, I am filled with the deepest sympathy for the entire political body. There is nothing so perfectly exasperating as to knowpeople are differing with you, and I know there is nothing so wearing to the mind."
An exciting debate in the Senate was occupying public attention at this time, and to her other duties and entertainments she added that of following it in its course. She spent an hour or so at the Capitol every day, read the newspapers, and collected evidence and information with an unflagging industry which would have been worthy of admiration if it had been inspired by any serious intention. But she made no pretence of seriousness of intention. She returned home from such visits with derisive little arguments jotted down in her note-book and little sketches of senatorial profiles adorning its pages, and entertained a select audience with them in the evening,—an audience which not infrequently included the political dignitaries themselves. Her manner would have been a mystery to Tredennis if he had not remembered the professor's words of warning, and even with their memory in his mind he was often at a loss. There was a restless eagerness to be amused in all she did, and he felt that, after all, she was privately less successful in her efforts than she seemed. He was, at least, relieved to find that he had but little to do in the role assigned him. When Arbuthnot appeared again, he had entirely recovered his equilibrium, and was unemotional, self-possessed, occasionally flippant, plainly cherishing, at no time, any intention of regarding himself seriously. He did not sing his "Serenade" again, and, when he sang at all, committed himself to no outreaching warmth of feeling. He rarely spoke to Bertha alone, and the old tendency to airy derision of each other's weaknesses reasserted itself. Only once Tredennis heard him address her with any degree of seriousness, and this was in reference to her visits to the Senate. There had been an all-night session, and it had been her whim to take part in it to the extent of sitting up until after midnight, and she had returned home more tired than she was willing to confess. Arbuthnot—who, with Richard, Tredennis, and a newspaper friend, had been her companions in the dissipation—remonstrated with her after the little supper they had on their arrival at the house.
Bertha had left the table, and was half reclining against a pile of cushions on the sofa, and Arbuthnot followed her, and spoke in a somewhat lowered voice.
"You are making a mistake in doing such things," he said. "Why will you keep it up? It's all nonsense. You don't care for it really. It is only one of your caprices. You have not a particle of serious interest in it."
"I have as much serious interest in it as I have in anything else," she answered. "More, indeed. Do you suppose I was not interested when Senator Ayres got up to-night to be immeasurably superior by the hour? It elevated my mental plane, and gave me food for reflection. It filled me with a burning desire to be immeasurably superior, too. Is he always immeasurably superior? Could he keep it up, do you suppose, in the bosom of his family,—when he is putting salt on his eggs at breakfast, for instance, and thinks no one is looking? When he tries on a new hat, does he do it with a lofty air of scorn, and does he fall asleep and have the nightmare with coldly contemptuous condescension? I don't mind mentioning to you that it is one of my favorite moods to be immeasurably superior. It is such a good way when you cannot get what you want; it disposes of your antagonists so simply and makes you feel so deserving; but I never could keep it up,—but that may be owing to weakness of character, and the fact that I am only an unworthy imitator and lack the vigor to convince myself of my own genuineness. Oh! I assure you, I was very much interested indeed."
"Well," said Arbuthnot, "I might have expected you would say something of this kind. It is your little way of evading matters. You have a knack at it."
Bertha looked down at the footstool on which hersmall shoe rested, and then up at him with a quiet face.
"Yes, it is my little way," she answered. "I suppose I might count it among my few small accomplishments. But don't you think it is as good a way as any,—particularly if it is the only way you have?"
"It is as good a way as any," replied Arbuthnot, with the calmness of a sensible person addressing an attractive but obstinate child. "But you know it will not prevent my saying again what I said at first. You are very foolish to tire yourself out for nothing, and you will regret it when it is too late."
"Yes," answered Bertha, "if I regret it I shall naturally regret it when it is too late. Did you ever hear of any one's regretting a thing too early, or just in time? That is what regret means—that one is too late."
Arbuthnot sat down near her.
"If you want to talk in that style," he remarked, in the most impartial manner, "I am entirely in the mood to listen, now I have expressed my opinion. It isn't worth much asmyopinion, but it is worth something as the truth, and I am not afraid you will forget it, but, in the meantime, until Mrs. Dacre is in the mood to be escorted home, you can pander to my lower nature by showing me the sketches you made of Senator Ayres and the Speaker, and the gentleman from Iowa who was afraid to fall asleep."
The next morning, calling with a newspaper she had wanted, Tredennis, being handed into the room in which Bertha usually spent her mornings at home, found her lying upon a sofa, and, as she did not hear him enter, he had the opportunity to stand for a few seconds and look at her.
While he did so she opened her eyes languidly and saw him, and the thought which held his mind for the moment sprang to his lips and uttered itself.
"I do not think you know," he said, "how pale you are."
"I do not want to know," she answered, with a rather tired little smile, "if it is unbecoming, and I am sure it is. But I will ask you to excuse my getting up."
He entirely passed over the first part of her reply, as she had noticed he had a habit of passing in silence many of her speeches, though she had not been able to decide why he did so.
"You said," he went on, "that when the season was over you intended to rest. Have you been doing it lately?"
"Yes," she answered, with entirely unembarrassed readiness. "I have been very quiet indeed."
At this he was silent for a moment again, and during the pause she lay and looked at him with an expression of curious interest—trying to make up her mind whether he did not reply because he felt himself not sufficiently ready of speech to meet her upon her own ground, or whether his silence was a negative sign of disapprobation.
"I am never tired when anything is going on," she said, at last.
"That is the worst of it," he replied.
"Oh, no—the best of it," she said, and then she looked away from him across the room, and added, in a tone altogether different, "One does not want too much time on one's hands."
Once or twice before he had seen this slight, unconscious change fall upon her, and, without comprehending, had been sharply moved by it, but she always recovered herself quickly, and she did so now.
"I tried it once," she said, "and it did not agree with me, and since then I have occupied myself. As Richard says, 'one must have an object,' and mine is to occupy myself."
"You accomplish your end, at least," he remarked.
"Yes," she answered. "I congratulate myself upon that. Upon the whole I do not know any one who is more fortunate than I am. No other life would suit mehalf so well as the one I lead. I am fond of gayety, and change, and freedom, and I have all three. Richard is amiable, the children are like him, and there is nothing to interfere with my having my own way, and amusing myself as I please. I should be thoroughly unhappy if I could not have my own way; to have it invariably is one of my laudable ambitions, and as I always get it you see I have reason for being charmed with my lot."
"You are very fortunate," he said.
"I am more than fortunate," she answered. Then she broke into a little laugh. "It is rather odd," she said, "that just before you came in I was lying thinking of the time you were in Washington before, and there came back to me something I said to you the night you gave me the heliotrope."
"Was it," said Tredennis, "what you said to me about being happy?"
"What!" she said. "You remember it? I scarcely thought that you would remember it."
"Yes," said Tredennis, "I remember it."
"I could not bear the thought of not being happy," she went on. "It had never occurred to me that such a thing was a possibility until you said something which suggested it to me. I recollect how it startled me. It was such a new idea."
She stopped and lay for a moment silent.
"And this morning?" suggested Tredennis.
"This morning," she answered, rather slowly, though smiling as she spoke, "this morning, as I said, I decided that I had been very fortunate."
"Then," he said, "youhavebeen happy."
"If I had not been," she answered, "it would have been very curious. I have never been interfered with in the least."
"That is happiness, indeed," said Tredennis.
Just now he was reflecting upon the fact that all their conversations took the same turn and ended in the sameway. It mattered little how they began; in all cases she showed the same aptitude for making her subject an entirely inconsequent source of amusement. Experience was teaching him that he need expect nothing else. And, even as he was thinking this, he heard her laugh faintly again.
"Shall I tell you what I see in your face," she said,—"what I see oftener than anything else?"
"I should be glad to know," he replied.
"I see that you are thinking that I am very much changed, and that it is not for the better."
He paused a moment before he answered her, and when he did so he spoke with his eyes fixed on the floor, and slowly:
"You are not the Bertha I used to know," he said. "But that I should have allowed myself to expect it shows simply that I am a dull, unprogressive fellow."
"It shows that you are very amiable and sanguine," she said. "I should have been even more fortunate than it has been my fate to be if I had not changed in ten years. Think of the good fortune of having stood still so long,—of having grown no older, no wiser. No," in a lower voice, "I am not the Bertha you used to know."
But the next instant, almost as soon as she had uttered the words, she lifted her eyes with the daring little smile in them.
"But I am very well preserved," she said. "I am really very well preserved. I am scarcely wrinkled at all, and I manage to conceal the ravages of time. And, considering my years, I am quite active. I danced every dance at the Ashworths' ball, with the kindly assistance of Mr. Arbuthnot and his friends. There weredébutantesin the room who did not dance half as often. The young are not what they were in my generation,—though probably the expiring energies of advanced age are flaming in the socket and"—
She stopped suddenly, letting her hands drop at hersides. "No," she said again, "I—I am not the Bertha you used to know—and this morning I am—tired enough to be obliged to admit it."
Tredennis took a quick step toward her; the hot blood showed itself under his dark skin. What he had repressed in the last months got the better of him so far that he had no time to reflect that his stern, almost denunciatory, air could scarcely be ranked among ordinary conventionalities, and that an ordinarily conventional expression of interest might have been more reasonably expected from him than a display of emotion, denunciatory or otherwise.
"Can you expect anything else?" he said. "Is your life a natural one? Is it a natural and healthy thing that every hour of it should contain its own excitement, and that you should not know what simple, normal rest means? Who could be blind to the change which has taken place in you during the last few weeks? Last night you were so tired and unstrung that your hand trembled when you lifted your glass to your lips. Arbuthnot told you then it was a mistake; I tell you now that it is worse,—it is madness and crime."
He had not thought of what effect he would produce,—his words were his indignant masculine protest against her pallor and weakness, and the pain he had borne in silence for so long. It seemed, however, that he had startled her singularly. She rose from her reclining posture slowly and sat upright, and her hands trembled more than they had done the night before.
"Why," she faltered, "why are you so angry?"
"That," he returned bitterly, "means that I have no right to be angry, of course! Well, I am willing to admit it,—I have no right. I am taking a liberty. I don't even suggest that you are making a mistake,—as Mr. Arbuthnot did; I am rough with you, and say something worse."